How Gun Control Kills

And why death-penalty opponents should think twice about firearms bans.

Is there an evil worse than killing children? Is there anything more heart-wrenching than the feeling of absolute helplessness in our inability to protect them?

If Newtown, Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza had not taken his own life, millions would want him dead. Part of this tragedy is that the person responsible cannot be brought to proper justice. The entire event played out by his rules. The lack of justice compounds the loss of life. It makes the hurt worse.

It is these emotions—the high pitch of public outrage that accompanies the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting or any tragedy—that liberals say should preclude any possibility of the death penalty. But when liberals present rational arguments against capital punishment or demonstrate multiple instances where government has mistakenly executed innocents, such reasoning is often no match for society’s call for blood.

The calls for increased gun control after the Newtown shooting are also an emotional reaction. The same thought of murdered children that would naturally lead people to support the death penalty has also led politicians, pundits, and other Americans to clamor for more gun restrictions. This happens every single time there is a public shooting that becomes a national tragedy. But it’s demonstrably wrongheaded—and potentially deadly.

Gun control deters violent crime about as well as the death penalty. Worse, stricter gun control is the surest way to insure that virtually every would-be shooter is successful.

Two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary rampage, a gunman in San Antonio, Texas attempted to open fire on a movie crowd watching “The Hobbit.” Luckily, the man’s gun jammed. Even more luckily, there was an off-duty police officer who stopped that man with one bullet.

When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and five others were shot in Tuscon, Arizona in January, the man who wrestled the gunman to the ground before he could continue killing had a carry-and-conceal weapon. Said 24-year-old Joe Zamudio, who acknowledged that being armed gave him the confidence to tackle shooter Jared Lee Loughner, “I was ready to end his life.”

Here is a list of potential national tragedies that were prevented thanks to an armed populace (as compiled by the Libertarian Party):“A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school’s vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck; A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun; A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter; A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened; A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns; A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.”

These are just a few examples spanning 15 years. On December 11 a man opened fire in a mall in Portland, Oregon—that is, until he was confronted by another armed man who had a carry-and-conceal weapon. The gunman who had fired on shoppers then took his own life.

If the people who prevented these crimes through the use of personal firearms were legally prevented from having them—as many liberals now clamor for—America would very likely be remembering a dozen more national tragedies.

In an article for The Atlantic titled “The Death Penalty’s Enduring Emotional Appeal,” lawyer and author Wendy Kaminer wrote in 2011: “Support for the death penalty (like opposition to it) is generally more ideological than pragmatic… This means that people who favor executions don’t accept at face value abolitionist claims about wrongful executions, no matter how carefully they’re documented.”

The same is true of gun-control advocates. As columnist Thomas Sowell has noted:“The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago.”

That there really isn’t any way to predict or ultimately prevent these random tragedies—except, if you’re lucky, an armed person being nearby—is a basic truth liberals’ anti-gun ideology has blinded them to. Banning knives would not have stopped Jack the Ripper. Banning guns will not stop the crazed few who seek to open fire on the public.

To the degree that liberals get their way on gun control, there will be more deaths of innocents. I’m not saying liberals would want the potential murders implied in the examples here to occur. But what they want legislatively would only—inevitably—lead to more killing.

Jack Hunter is the co-author of The Tea Party Goes to Washington bySen. Rand Paul and serves as New Media Director for Senator Paul. The viewspresented in this essay are the author’s own.

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57 Responses to How Gun Control Kills

I love it how anti gun control people compare UNDEVLOPED countries with tight gun laws with high murder rates. Places like Russia, Honduras are not considered developed or advanced economies. Those countries have high levels of corruption and other issues.

Who is to say their murder rate wouldn’t be even higher if they had loose gun laws? Try comparing to an advanced economy.

Google ‘developed country’ and you will see Russia is not an advanced economy and has a low GDP per capita.

Ok Tim, but how do you explain the US being 28th on the list of murders per 100,000 people despite having the highest rate of gun ownership in the world? Certainly not all of the 27 countries that have a higher murder rate per 100,0000 citizens than the US are “underdeveloped.”

Wilko: You’ve chosen just two counties for your contrast with the US. Japan has very low gun ownership. But Germany’s gun ownership actually ranks the 15th in the world. In addition, Switzerland is #4 in the world in gun ownership and their rate of gun violence is very low as well.

Interestingly, the US is not #1 in the world when it comes to gun deaths per 100,000 people. It is actually 28th. This is what happens when you only give a three country sample set and don’t talk about the gun ownership rates for the statistics you site. Better luck next time.

Matt: when you mention countries like Germany and Switzerland you are talking about countries that have restrictions on firearm ownership that US liberals could only dream of. For example being required to be trained in using the firearm, needing a license with photo ID, registration of the firearm, not storing ammo at home, counting ammo at the range.

And if we want to use international comparisons I think we can all agree let’s put the US in the First World column. Do we want to start comparing our country to Zimbabwe on unemployment next? Or how are our taxes compared to Afghanistan? We’re no where near the bottom of any list if you include the Third World. But if we did start comparing ourselves to the Third World and got too smug, we might end up there ourselves.

Nations differ in many ways. Why not compare a nation to itself? the cities with strict gun control are where the most problems are happening. Piers Morgan refuses to look at this, he only compares America to other countries. Hand picking his data. He refuses to admit that overall violence is worse in other nations, he only talks about guns.

the media refuses to report when armed citizens stop attacks. it happens many times everyday. criminals hate armed citizens but they don’t hate laws that disarm people. why wouldn’t a criminal love gun control? why not do what they hate and fight back? many citizens train right alongside of police, many are just as capable